Quantitative Benchmarking

This is useful in determining how serious particular problems are compared with other partnerships. It will typically involve ranking socially and economically comparable partnerships, according to either their overall crime rate, or particular offence rates. A more sophisticated approach might include costs or staff allocation.

The key advantage is that differences in crime and disorder rates between partnerships, that can not be accounted for by socio-economic differences, are thrown into stark relief, providing an easily understood driver for change. This type of information is most useful at the audit stage.

The key disadvantage is that it would not identify the mechanisms that led to change taking place, or the contexts in which those changes took place. Hence it does little to increase a partnership’s understanding of what it needs to do to improve.

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